


sweetly sings the donkey, at the break of day

by Anonymous



Category: Doc Martin (TV), My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Canonical Character Death, Crack premise treated solemn and serious, Gen, I mean a few of the men in Portwenn get mentioned, Past Character Death, Why Did I Write This?, but they are not the focus of the conversation, may not be canon compliant for either canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 10:53:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16262717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Dr. Ruth Ellingham finally grieves her sister--to someone she thought at first wasn't really there.





	sweetly sings the donkey, at the break of day

"What in heavens name are you doing?" Ruth asked the horse at the gate, wondering as she did it why she was sounding so much like _Joan_ , and why she was talking to a creature who surely didn't understand her, and how it could be that the horse looked so...purple. Like a dusty thistle, or the sky at dusk.

"Looking at rocks," said the horse in a melancholy monotone.

"Oh my god I'm--" 

( _Marty, Marty--_ )

 _hallucinating._ Or what? Talking to a horse--which talked back, but also hearing Joan in a way she shouldn't.

"You've got a decent soil here, too," said the horse, in the same dull monotone (almost like Eeyore. In the movie she viewed for age appropriateness and likely approval of Martin before giving it to James Henry.) and settled, almost set back on...its haunches? Was that the way to talk about it? Seemed like an odd posture for a horse, but Joan might have known. Not for certain; they were born in the tractor era, but anyway she'd have had a better idea than Ruth.

"Are you alright?" asked the horse, with slight solicitation.

"Al. Al! I'm hallucinating." Ruth called out, in a reasonably calm voice. Odd, but many a frightening situation didn't faze her, while this...this unforeseen extreme malfunction of the brain, did.

Was she dreaming? But that...didn't seem likely either. 

And then she remembered: Al Large had been here and gone early this morning, some errand he was on. There probably wasn't anyone around. Or if there were, they were Joan's neighbours, not hers, and she honestly did not want to approach them with this.

"--think you are," said the horse (Ruth had missed the first part of the sentence and how did that work when it was a hallucination?), with something uncannily like a shrug.

"What?" she asked, a bit rudely.

"I said, I don't think you are. My sister said her friend went to a place with ...humans in it. It could be I did that. I'm a rock expert, not a brain expert, but I don't think you're a hallucination."

"A _rock_ expert?" And then it clicked "You mean you're a geologist. I'm talking to a geologist horse."

"I guess you could call it that. I have a rocktorate. And I'm a pony."

She smiled grimly with a hint of hysteria. "I'm talking to a pony with a doctorate in geology."

"My name is Maud. Maud Pie." 

"Dr. Pie--" Ruth repeated. "I'm Dr. Ellingham, Ruth Ellingham, but don't call me that here, that's my nephew."

"You have a nephew?" Maud asked.

"Yes, he's a medical doctor, used to be a surgeon, got hæmophobia and came out here with the idea of being near Joan, I suppose. He always did like Joan and she him."

"Who's Joan?" Maud continued.

"My--" _(the chickens. ...Bert Large, you...)_ Ruth swallowed around a lump in her throat. "late sister."

"I have a sister. Actually more than one, but Pinkie is the closest."

"'Pinkie Pie'?" Ruth asked, feeling as if the conversation had veered towards madness.

"Yes," Maud agreed. "She likes to give parties."

"I can't say Joan did that," and Ruth felt tears threatening and a desperate, bizarre, desire for touch. Any living, friendly being would practically do, a cat or dog or person. This was human, she was still grieving, or maybe hadn't properly begun, and she didn't want to be held only-- ( _Joan always did. Joan hugged you, because you did like it, from her, occasionally,_ her brain reminded her, not at all in Joan's voice) only to feel the warmth of someone else.

Maud seemed to study her for a moment, then the pony took a few steps toward Ruth and reclined, so that her shoulders were in easy reach. "I don't think your hands would go very well with hooves," she said dryly. "But if you like, you can--hug me, or something. I won't mind under the circumstance."

With an uneasily trembling hand, Ruth reached out to feel sleek warm fur on Maud's shoulder. There was something reassuring, something that also made her question her earlier certainty on whether this, Maud, _was_ a hallucination. 

"I'd miss Pinkie Pie a lot if she were gone. Sometimes I even missed her at school, or just when she had moved to Ponyville and I hadn't. I used to pat Boulder sometimes then," Maud said in a confidential tone.

Ruth nodded, not moving to any more intimacy but also not removing her hand.

After a moment, her voice fragile, she allowed "I wish I'd owned up to missing Joan more than I ever did. If I'd ever bothered to think much on it, I could've told her and all of us—I should've known—that we weren't helping ourselves with all the repression in this family, but it seemed easier to go on ignoring the idea of spending time with her, because, oh, it might've been inconvenient or something."

Maud waited a moment, then leaned a little into Ruth's shoulder in a horsey sort of pat. "Pinkie may be a party planet, but the rest of our family isn't very interested in excitement or change. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in an in between place. She's the wild one. Was Joan like that?"

"Well," Ruth said around a lump in her throat, but with a steadier voice, "she wasn't especially a party enthusiast. But she was a fixture of the community here. I never have been like that."

"Mmm," the pony murmured. "Pinkie wants me to make friends, but that's not always easy for everypony's disposition. But I have found a few people, and I think you will too. Maybe you have already."

"Well—" yes, she knew a few people around Portwenn. But it was a give and take, when everyone knows everyone. "I have, yes, but I'm not sure if I'm staying."

"I know the feeling," Maud said sagely, her breath warm on Ruth's shoulder. "I debated over things like that, whether I should devote myself to my studies or make time and space for friends like Pinkie wanted."

"I think I am going to stay for a bit, anyway. Tidy things up," Ruth pronounced with growing conviction.

"Yeah." Maud nodded, and then shifted away. "I do need to continue my studies of the local rock if I'm going to make it to Pinkie's this afternoon. But I'm pretty sure I'll be around if you need someone to listen."


End file.
